It feels like something that belongs in a Joseph Heller novel that the work of raising money for a creative project on Kickstarter — the graphics, video, copy, newsletters and updates, marketing plans, stretch goals, and more — is a creative project in its own right. You must make a cool thing in order to be able to make a different but related cool thing. It’s a conundrum that is also a weirdly perfect fit for “Game Changer,” Dropout’s flagship game series. 

The team behind the show that changes every show, wherein a rotating group of comedians need to figure out what game they are playing as they play it, is Kickstarting a home edition board game that takes three of the series’ episodes — ”Sam Says,” “Name a Number,” and “Bingo” — as formats for three rounds in the board game playable by groups large and small. 

The only catch for those with a tie collection and a little pointer that have been waiting for this day is that the main Sam in question — Dropout CEO and “Game Changer” host and EP Sam Reich — isn’t giving up his job behind the rainbow podium any time soon. 

“We didn’t want for one person to play host and be left out — based on personal experience, whether it’s as a dungeon master or a Blood on the Clocktower storyteller, those games are much more involved and require a lot from that role, but in a traditional party game, that game facilitator person doesn’t have that much to do,” Reich told IndieWire. 

Finding the right balance for a home game version of the show was a tricky, iterative process, and it was only when the show’s writing team linked up with game designer Joshua Balvin. With Balvin’s help, they landed on a version of “Game Changer” that could work outside of the Dropout studios.

“The compromise is you’ll know the rules headed into these games, but you won’t know the prompts. And some of the prompts are very subversive and surprising, so even if you know the rules, by the time you flip a card over, it’ll be like, ‘Holy shit, I have to do what?,’” Reich said. 

The writers and Balvin road-tested these prompt-driven versions of the episodes in question; then, when they enjoyed it, broadened the testing circle out to their friends at Smosh and to the wider Dropout Cinematic Universe. The biggest fun surprise, for Reich, was the adapted version of “Name a Number.” 

In the show itself, Isabella Roland, Erika Ishii, and Becca Scott were prompted to out-bid each other on challenges they didn’t know ahead of time, just by naming a number that turned out to be the number of T-shirts they needed to wear for the rest of the episode or how long they needed to stay in the studio past wrap. 

“[In the board game version], we’re telling people to pick a high number or a low number out of 100, and either the highest wins or the lowest wins, depending on the card. Everybody writes down their number out of 100, and everybody reveals at the same time. You have no idea what you just bid on, but [if you win] you have to do it that number of times,” Reich said. “So, like, [in a test-game] Brennan [Lee Mulligan] has to say the word ‘flaccid’ to Becca 75 times without either of them smiling. But you have no idea what you’re going to be doing until the card turns over. It really feels like ‘Game Changer’ in that moment.” 

The streaming platform’s first foray into games is on Kickstarter, mainly because it is the online platform where board games are launched and discovered. The platform is crucially important for pre-orders, from the smallest indie to robust game studios, and Reich is certain that Dropout would either overestimate or underestimate demand without the clear commitment of interest backing a crowdfund provides. But also, Reich told IndieWire that the interactivity of a campaign is important to the game’s development, too. 

“You want folks to be able to contribute to it. Like, we want to do a user-suggested prompt pack,” Reich said. “My vision for this — and who knows whether or not we’ll hit our objectives or not but my ideal version of it is one that we can continue to invest in over the years. Rather than this being a one-time-only thing, we update it like Jackbox or Cards Against Humanity and come out with pack after pack.” 

Creating a level of audience engagement beyond throwing something cool up on an online storefront is a requirement of a good Kickstarter campaign, and Reich is excited to go overboard in that respect, as only “Game Changer” can. There will be “Game Changer” challenges embedded into the campaign itself — not so dissimilar to the ARG that ran alongside Season 7 of the series and unlocked the knowledge that a secret additional episode, “Samalamadingdong,” was coming to serve as the true season finale. 

“Once we conceived of this metagame idea, it excited us because it felt like it took a little bit of the sharper edges of the capitalist nature of this kind of an enterprise off to make it fun and subversive,” Reich said. “I think we originally started putting these pieces together more than a year ago in the beginning of 2025, and then we were originally going to launch in January or February of this year, and we pushed it back to make sure we would get the Kickstarter piece right.” 

The Kickstarter launches on May 5, but folks who want to play along with the game of the campaign will likely need to do more than refresh the project page. “Suffice it to say, our stretch goals will not look like traditional stretch goals in our version of this,” Reich said. “If this is successful enough, my big what-if is, next year, can we make that wheel [from ‘Spin That Wheel‘]? At least a miniature version of that wheel. That’s my white whale.” 

For Reich and for everyone, of course, the only way to begin is by beginning.

“Game Changer” returns to Dropout on Monday, May 18. “Game Changer: Home Edition” is live on Kickstarter.